(Minghui.org) Two Dandong City, Liaoning Province, residents were admitted to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on March 18, 2025 to each serve a 2.5-year term for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zhao Honge, 57, and Ms. Zhang Shujie, 59, were arrested on May 22, 2024 and held in the Dandong City Lockup. They appeared in the Zhen’an District Court on October 25, 2024. Both of them testified in their own defense.
Ms. Zhao, a former teacher at Fuchun Elementary School, said that when her son was diagnosed with congenital heart disease when he was seven years old, the doctor predicted that he only had six months to live. In 1996, their entire family began to practice Falun Gong at the recommendation of a coworker and her son soon recovered. She strove to become a better person by following Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
Ms. Zhao added that there is no law in China that says practicing Falun Gong is a crime and that the General Administration of Press and Publication lifted its ban on Falun Gong publications in 2011. Falun Gong is now welcomed and practiced by people around the globe, and yet practitioners in China are sentenced to prison simply for trying to be good people.
The judge interrupted Ms. Zhao many times while she spoke.
The judge announced on November 29, 2024, that Ms. Zhao and Ms. Zhang were each sentenced to 2.5 years. They appealed to the Dandong City Intermediate Court, which ruled to uphold their original verdicts. They were transferred to the prison on March 18, 2025.
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